Before and After

Here's a sneak peek inside the little yellow house, finally!  One of the things I loved about the house the most when first looking at it was it's potential.  Fact of life: Potential costs money and time and I overestimated both.  It also helps to have a clearly defined sense of direction which I took my sweet time deciding on.  Fortunately my mom finally came into town and made everything all better.  We were able to pick colors and get to work! So enough yakking, here is the kitchen before.  

In daylight it was really pale and didn't do a whole lot for the wood color.  I actually like yellow but knew it could be better.  

 Here's after, I just love blue and wanted to bring out the cabinets more and even painted the ceiling a light beige-tan-brown color.  Unfortunately the lovely blue brought out an unlovely blue-ish purple in the 1990's laminate, but that's just going to have to wait.

The kitchen opens up into this room....sometimes called the dining room (what we think it was meant to be), the den, the fireplace room, the room with Chase's toys, soon to be called the Christmas tree room.  It's long  and awkward but it's the room that people gravitate towards.  I've had the hardest time figuring our how to lay it out and have moved furniture at least 6 times.  But I still love it and love the huge fireplace so here is before...very brown and the brick blended in the cabinets and the wall color was a pale beige.  Blah. 

And after 17 paint samples and three days of family labor....After!  Sooooo much brighter and bigger!

Here's the slave labor hard at work...

 Grumpy didn't complain because Chase got him plenty of "Grumpy juice."

I love how the two colors look together!

 It's so warm and cozy!  So that huge dresser is my craft dresser and it is bursting at the seams.  A little ridiculous how much stuff I have piled in there that I might possibly never use again, but you never know when that 6 inches of fabric scrap might come in handy.

 Chase was so sad to see Mimi and Grumpy leave because all the good spoiling went with them.

The Year of "The Great Pumpkin"

I let Chase watch It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown! for a whole week and every pumpkin we ever saw became THE Great Pumpkin.  One of those errors you don't want to correct because it's so heartwarming every time he says it.  Unlike he's recent pronunciation of fox.  You have a little trouble with the x sound and it's just out of my comfort zone.  For the record the "x" sound is a lot easier to fix than the overuse of "no mama!"

October was filled with pumpkins and friends and a growing boy!  I mean seriously, he looks huge. And skinny.

How most of our pictures develop - "Chase look at mom!  Chase smile!  Over here Chase!  Ok Chase.  Show me your teeth."  And this is what I get.

Super cute bunch of kids at the pumpkin patch for our buddy Luke's party.

Chase's amazing artwork!

So my wonderful cousin Lauren sent Chase a flight suit for his birthday. I tried to put it on him a few times and he would run away screaming "no! no!"  Hmmm.  Great.  During one of these episodes I thought I heard "No bye bye!" and thought there is no way he associates putting on a flight suit with going to work?  So when Brian got home I asked him to try.  Without screaming Chase calmly put on his flight suit, got it zipped up and said "Bye bye, going to work."  Now when Brian comes home Chase tells him to change clothes.  Tough lesson at an early age.  But here is mister top gun at tumbling class with his buddies.

Don't tell me this picture is blurry.  Just don't.

A wonderful surprise for Chase, Brian got to come to his class fall party!  Just before this Chase had run across the room and thrown himself on Brian.  But pull out the camera and we get this face.

He was super sweet to share his cupcake with me :)

We trick or treated at the county courthouse and library yesterday with our buddy Luke and it was just the cutest thing ever.  I think the little old ladies and men were just as cute as the kids!  I just had to share this one, so cute of Luke and really shows how well Chase got into character with his non-impressed attitude.

It was so funny to watch and listen to them, "Come on Chase!" "Wait for me Luke!"  The airplane basket just completed the outfit.

The ladies just loved seeing the kids and handing out candy.  By the end of it Chase got impatient and was just sticking his hand in the bowls but also saying thank you.

Checking out the army models at the library.

Maybe they were twins and we just didn't know it...

Here we are trick or treating at dad's work, it was crazy but fun and Chase got lots of compliments and one not so compliment...
"Oh hey you decided to dress like me for Halloween, cool kid!"
"Nah man, he's Navy."
Apparently there is a huge difference between navy and air force flight suits.  Both are green, have lots of zippers, and airplane patches so what the difference is I am not quite sure.  These are our buddies Pig-pen and Tweedle-Dee, both too cute!

Double fisting the candy with dad.

We went around our cute little neighborhood last night and just had the best time!  The wagon was perfect and just added to the feeling that we were actually trick or treating about 5 decades ago.  So you can't see it too well but we finally painted the front door red and it makes me happy.

Chase didn't quite understand that just because someone at a "nice house" opened their door doesn't mean you can walk in.  And every time he got back to the wagon he would take out handfuls of candy and just hold them until the next house.  We managed to gather enough candy to pass out without having to buy any.  And we used at as a sharing lesson for Chase, after we pulled out all the good stuff of course.